Clinton docs: Lewinsky, speechwriting and race

The Clinton Library took the wraps off another batch of White House documents Friday afternoon, offering new insights into how aides scrambled to address the Monica Lewinsky scandal, how the hot-button issue of race tied the White House staff up in knots and how former President Bill Clinton cast a wide net for advice in advance of his major speeches.

The new set of Clinton documents make little mention of then-first lady Hillary Clinton, and so are unlikely to have a major political impact. However, many of the memos were written by or mention aides to Bill Clinton who now hold prominent positions in the Obama administration.

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The newly-released files don’t appear to include some of the most sensitive scandal-related documents believed to be in the overall set of about 33,000 pages of records initially withheld under restrictions that expire 12 years after a president leaves office.

Here are highlights from the roughly 2,500 pages the National Archives posted online Friday:

The scramble to find a post-Lewinsky presidential tone

Just a day after the Monica Lewinsky scandal hit the mainstream media in January 1998, top Clinton adviser Minyon Moore urged a shift in the “tone” of the State of the Union address Clinton was scheduled to give five days later.

“I thought it would be important in the State of the Union, that the President was somehow able to articulate in his speech a tone that reflected restoring people’s faith and trust in him and the Presidency,” Moore wrote in an e-mail to chief speechwriter Michael Waldman and communications adviser Sidney Blumenthal. “Sylvia [Mathews, then-deputy White House chief of staff and now Office of Management and Budget director] spoke with the President and he did convey that he wanted us to be mindful of this tone. I have come to understand this in my own humble way as an oblique message of hope rooted in scripture, poetry and vision.”

Moore — who has remained a close adviser to both Bill and Hillary Clinton — made clear that she wasn’t proposing an explicit discussion of the mushrooming independent counsel investigation, but simply striking some themes and adding some flourishes that would reinforce the president’s support.

“Please recognize, I am in no way suggesting that he use his speech to discuss our current situation head on, I am simply stating we cannot take his supporters for granted nor his detractors and they need to be reassured on several fronts: (1) that he’s on okay [sic]; (2) he will continue to lead this nation with the passion and vigor that he has for 5 years; and (3) that he remains a great leader, still energized and a fighter for the American people,” Moore wrote, urging that Clinton “tell a story of hope against amazing odds.”

When Clinton made his speech on January 27, 1998, he made no mention of the investigation or of the allegation that he had an affair with a White House intern. He did however begin to lay the groundwork for an ultimately-successful strategy to paint himself and the country as moving forward, while those pursuing the investigation were at least by implication enmeshed in the past.

Clinton White House struggles with race

The papers provide further evidence of the tensions in the White House between those overseeing Clinton’s initiative on race and other policy advisers.

The newly-disclosed documents show aides across the White House complex chiming in with concerns about a report Clinton planned which eventually became known as the president’s “race book.” The project eventually became the subject of some derision in the press corps as aides kept pushing back its release. It was never published.

“My main concern is that the level of generality and the long list of ideas…will generate a ho-hum reaction by the press,” White House civil rights adviser Edward Correia wrote in a 1999 memo to top Clinton race adviser Christopher Edley Jr. “It could be one of those more-is-less situations where there are lots and lots of ideas, but there doesn’t seem to be anything sharp enough to react to, so the (irrational) reaction is that there’s ‘nothing new’ there.”

“I don’t think the discussion of community justice makes clear exactly what policies the Administration is calling for,” White House crime policy adviser Jose Cerda III wrote. “I think the draft’s language will be viewed by our friends in law enforcement as inflammatory….Either we believe the system is fundamentally fair or unfair, but it can’t be both.”

As Edley pushed for discussion of the race initiative in the 1998 State of the Union, he took aim at some of the poll-tested proposals which Clinton’s aides credited with helping him rout Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole in 1996.

“Must mention the Race Initiative because, after all, it is a major priority activity,” Edley wrote. “Must have some lift — can’t be about itty-bitty stuff. No school uniforms.”

In his speech, Clinton did mention the race project and call for eliminating a backlog of cases at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But he passed up Edley’s suggestion to call for an “army” of 10,000 “soldiers for justice” to struggle for racial and ethnic justice across America.

The frictions between the domestic policy staff and Clinton’s advisers on racial issues re-surfaced in 2010, when President Barack Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Kagan worked for a time in the Clinton White House domestic policy shop.

Documents released by the Clinton Library prior to Kagan’s confirmation hearing show she reacted skeptically to some of Edley’s memos, and that Edley complained at one point that she appeared to be avoiding him.

The papers out Friday also show Clinton’s aides wrestling with America’s racial history as he traveled to Africa in 1998. Drafts of a speech Clinton gave at the famous slave trading depot of Goree Island, Senegal show advisers removing chunks that seemed to compare the plight of slaves to the injustices that led to the civil rights movement in the United States.

“Tone down the apology,” someone wrote on the first page of one of the drafts.